Today the 8th issue of The Halo-Halo Review is fresh! I’m happy to share the first review of The In(tervention of the Hay(na)ku by self-described “emerging critical scholar” Maileen Dumelod Hamto. You can see her review HERE but here’s an excerpt that of course makes me sniffle:
“Poetry rules are sometimes made to be broken,” Tabios writes. At its core, the Hay(na)ku is liberatory and emancipatory, similar in magnitude to the genius of Black American inventors and innovators in literature, music and other creative pursuits. By developing the Hay(na)ku, Tabios invited her contemporaries to define FilAm, U.S.-born-and-bred poetry from brown-skinned Filipinos, to cease conformity with white supremacist notions of “goodness” in art and the expectation of appeasing the tyranny of literary gatekeepers in order to be validated.
As an emerging critical scholar, I ask these questions: who determines the importance and significance of a word? In a literary form where every word counts, who is doing the counting? Poetic constructs are defined by rules established by dead white men. Tabios, as a decolonizing poet, takes self-determination to a whole other level by creating her own, devising a forward-looking FilAm/Pinoy literary identity that is concurrently sophisticated and approachable.
I’m also happy that several of my edited projects got reviews:
“HUMANITY, Vol. 1 edited by Eileen R. Tabios,” Review by Marjorie Evasco at The Tambara Journal, June, 2019 (as reprinted online by The Halo Halo Review)
“VERSES TYPHOON YOLANDA edited by Eileen R. Tabios,” Review by Neil Leadbeater
“Evidence of Fetus Diversity edited by Eileen R. Tabios,” Review by Aloy Polintan
Finally, I am mentioned in an anthology review:
“NO TENDER FENCES: An Anthology of Immigrant & First Generation Immigrant American Poetry edited by Carla Sofia Ferreira Kim Sousa & Marina Carreira,” Review by Cristina Querrer
I’m a cat with cream--or the halo-halo's coconut milk--all over its face. Thank you, Universe.
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